Riddle Me This
by HecateA
Summary: From the very first riddle they faced together, Scorpius could tell that sloppy, lazy, laissez-faire, smart aleck Al was, for all intents and purposes, a terrible Ravenclaw. But to Scorpius' eternal frustration, they're making it work. Oneshot.


**Author's Note: **Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

**Dedication: **To Aya, with whom I have spent lots and lots of time talking about what a trash Ravenclaw Al Potter would be compared to Scorpius' perfect studenthood.

**Hogwarts: **Defense Against the Dark Arts, Task 1, Write about someone trying to concentrate on something difficult.

**Warnings: **NA

* * *

**Stacked with:** MC4A; Sky's the Limit; Hogwarts

**Individual Challenge(s): **Ravenclaw MC (x2); Family Game Night; Misunderstood; Fall Leaves; Times to Come; Old Shoes; Themes and Things A (Friendship); Themes and Things B (Forgiveness); Short Jog; Flags and Ribbons (Y); Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux

**Representation(s): **Non-binary Al Potter

**Bonus challenge(s): **Car in a Tutu; Second Verse (Unwanted Advice); Chorus (Mouth of Babes)

**Tertiary bonus challenge: **NA

**Word Count: **2195

* * *

**Riddle Me This **

Scorpius chewed his lip. This was his first time trying to get back into the Ravenclaw common room without a prefect around, on account of how he'd stayed to talk to Professor Sinistra after class and had made his way back alone.

As he walked towards the Ravenclaw Common Room, he felt a sense of dread loom over him. What if he got caught outside? What if he wasn't clever to get in? Would he be asked to leave Ravenclaw House? Would his parents get a letter? Would he have to get Sorted again, at a special ceremony just for him in front of the whole school? Or with the next batch of first-years next September? Merlin, which would be worse? How disappointed would his Mum be? This wouldn't be happening if he'd just gone to Slytherin like the rest of his family…

He couldn't wait on the staircase any longer, and approached the bronze, eagle-head knocker.

"Hello, little one," the knocker said.

"I'm not little, I'm a first year," Scorpius said. "Which I supposed makes me little compared to the others in the school, but I'm Hogwarts-aged."

"Indeed you are," the knocker said. "Tell me this, then: what can be cracked, made, ruined, told, and played?"

Scorpius chewed on his lip.

"A joke," somebody said behind him. He turned around and there was the green-eyed student he'd met in the train quite briefly. Their name was Al, he was pretty sure, and their hair was messy and jet black as if they hadn't brushed it since they'd gotten to Hogwarts.

"That was my riddle," Scorpius interjected, suddenly quite cross that his chance to answer had been snatched away.

"Sorry," the student said. "I just really, _really _have to pee."

"There's bathrooms everywhere in this school, you didn't have to steal my riddle."

"They're all gendered, that's not my fault," Al replied. "Anyways, can we go in?"

"You go," Scorpius said. "I want to answer my riddle."

"Such tenacity is appreciated," the knocker said.

"Can you also appreciate how badly I have to pee?"

"Why of course, Mx. Potter," the knocker said. The door pivoted open, and Al darted inside, leaving Scorpius and the knocker alone.

"Are you ready?" the knocker asked.

"Yes," Scorpius said. Suddenly he felt a little less brave, after seeing how bold that other student had been...

"What can you catch but never throw?" the knocker asked.

Until the day that he died, Scorpius would never admit how long it had taken him to come up with: "a cold."

* * *

"Hey," Al said when they ran into Scorpius the next day. "Sorry if I was cranky with you outside, yesterday. I'd literally had to pee since Charms, I was pretty impatient."

"No problem," Scorpius said. "I get that."

Al shrugged. "Anyways, I wanted to make it up to you. I got the sense that you really, _really _liked Astronomy, so I asked Professor Sinistra if she'd be okay with letting us in on her Eclipse Viewing Party, and she said okay since you were such a keen student."

Scorpius' jaw dropped.

"But… she very specifically said that that was only open to sixth and seventh year students," Scorpius said.

Al shrugged again. "I asked anyways, and it worked out."

Scorpius shook his head. He _never _would have gone against a professor's instructions like that.

"So umm… anyways, sorry that I was rude earlier. We can go there straight after dinner?"

"Yeah," Scorpius grinned. "Yeah and we should probably sit and eat together too, right?"

"Okay," Al said. They smiled back.

They were on their way back from a wonderful viewing party, a hall pass from Professor Sinistra in hand.

"Out late, I see," the knocker said.

"Technically it's early," Al said. They yawned. "You know, since it's morning. Can you give us our riddle so that we can get a few hours of sleep before breakfast and double potions?"

"I have a head and tail, but no mouth or eyes or ears," the knocker said.

Scorpius bit back his answer and turned to Al, to see what his friend would come up with.

"A mutilated cat," Al said.

"That… was not the answer I had in mind."

"It could technically be true," Al said.

"I suppose so," Al said.

"I was thinking of a coin," Scorpius volunteered.

"That was more akin to my answer," the knocker said. "Alright, then, you best… never think of this again."

Maybe Scorpius should be worried that his new friend thought of mutilated cats so spontaneously.

Ultimately, he opted not to worry too much and instead be happy that Al was around.

* * *

"Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Sunday?" the knocker asked.

"Christmas Eve, Christmas, and Boxing Day," Al said.

"I was thinking of yesterday, today, and tomorrow," the knocker said.

"Okay," Al said. "My answer's not wrong though."

"This is true," the knocker said. "In you go."

* * *

"What can you swallow that can also swallow you?" the knocker asked.

Scorpius closed his eyes, focused hard for a second…

"Water!" he said. "Water, water, water, the answer's water!"

"Well done," the knocker said. "I did only need to hear the answer once."

"Right," Scorpius said. "Sorry."

But he was so, so proud to have gotten it right—and beaten Al to the punch too.

* * *

They had spent hours and hours studying in the library. Or, rather, Scorpius had. He absolutely wanted his first Transfigurations essay to be perfect. Al had mostly tried to adapt their paper plane techniques for parchment the whole time, but somehow still had a fairly interesting essay complete with citations ready to hand in.

"Do you want to get it this time?" Al offered as they approached. Scorpius nodded and they got to the common room's entrance.

"Good evening," he told the knocker.

"Good evening. You best come back inside quickly, lest you miss curfew. Tell me, little duo: what belongs to you, but other people use it more than you?" the knocker asked.

Scorpius chewed his lip, trying to focus. The only thing in his head were the names of great Transfiguration innovators and their years of birth and death, their signature spells, their groundbreaking accomplishments…

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, trying to concentrate.

"Your name," Scorpius finally said.

"I was going to say your face," Al mused.

"People don't use each others' faces," Scorpius said.

"Sure they do," Al said. "I use your face to recognize you all the time. That's why I don't wake up and go '_oh my gosh, who is this strange boy I am sleeping next to?'" _

"I would have accepted both answers, now get inside before your bickering gets you in trouble," the knocker said.

Scorpius was feeling irate as he crawled back in.

"Just because my answer wasn't as clever or unique as yours doesn't mean it was wrong," Scorpius said.

"I never said it was," Al replied. "I'm just _saying _'use' is a very broad verb…"

* * *

Scorpius sat by awkwardly, as Teresa Chang—the captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team—gave Al her promotional spiel.

"Anyways, think on it," Teresa said, sliding off the table she'd perched herself off to give her recruitment speech. "I'm looking to build up some young talent to make sure our team doesn't fall apart when people start graduating. I scout out Madam Hooch's flying lessons regularly to keep an eye on potential recruits, and I liked the way you were flying."

"Thanks," Al said.

Teresa knocked on the table. "Don't go joining the Gobstones Club on me or anything. Next year, I want you on the team. You'd make a mad good Chaser."

"Got it," Al said.

* * *

"What is nor man, nor woman—"

"Me," Albus cut in.

Scorpius burst out laughing.

"You did not wait until the end of my riddle," the knocker said. If a knob of bronze could look offended, this one absolutely did.

"Maybe, but you didn't speak quickly enough to annul my answer," Al responded.

"Remind me, young one. You are in your first year?"

"Correct."

"It is going to be a long seven years, isn't it?"

"Also correct. Are you going to make me answer another riddle?"

"No," the knocker sighed. "No, you were well-reasoned."

* * *

This one was particularly difficult.

"Shall I repeat the riddle for you?" the knocker asked.

A few weeks ago, Scorpius would have said that it was impossible for it to be _smug, _given the fact that it was, after all, a magical doorknob. Still, he'd been around long enough now to think that it was.

"I think I've nearly got it," Scorpius said. "I think it's on the tip of my tongue… 'When you need me, you throw me away…'"

"Let me repeat myself."

"I don't care," Al said.

"Pardon?" the knocker said.

"I don't care," Al repeated.

"That is not the answer to this riddle."

"No, but it is a truth prompted by your riddle, and isn't that a kind of answer?" Al said. "I mean, ultimately, isn't everything that we say in response to your riddles an answer regardless of whether it's right or wrong?"

"You are exhausting, young one," the knocker said, before swiveling open.

"An anchor," Scorpis said. "An anchor! When you need me you throw me away, when you don't need me, you pull me back."

"Great, door's open."

"Al," Scorpius said. "I had it. You didn't have to get smart with the knocker. You could've given me a chance."

"I'm tired, Scor," Al said. "I didn't really want to go to the extra credit potions session in the first place."

"Well nobody was making you," Scorpius said as they went inside. "You know what, forget it. Next time you don't want to do things properly, just stay here."

"Hey," Al said. "What do you mean I don't do things properly? I do!"

"No, Al," Scorpius said. "Everything comes easily to you. You sass the portrait, you do the bare minimum in class, you sail through school—you don't have to make it so obvious that you're just _good _at things."

"I'm not just _good _at things," Al said. "I'm clever. In my own way. Sorry if that doesn't include books and the answers to riddles that everyone gives the damn bird."

"There you go again!" Scorpius said. "Pretending you're better than everyone!"

"You know what Scorpius, maybe I wouldn't have to make everything look so easy if I didn't have so much to prove," Al said. "My father is literally the Chosen One. My mum scored a hat trick on her first ever professional Quidditch game. My brother runs Gryffindor, for all intents and purposes. Teddy graduated with all these honours before I even got here. I don't have a gender in a school that's making me have one. Don't come for me about the ways I decide to prove myself and the ways I decide to tell everyone to sod off."

"You're not the only one here with a legacy," Scorpius shot back. "My dad literally dropped out of school because he broke all the rules and took all the wrong turns, and now I have to play rule by rule by rule or else everyone starts _panicking _about who I am and what I'm up to!"

Neither of them had realised that they'd been having this conversation in front of the entire common room.

"Let's go upstairs," Scorpius mumbled to Al, grabbing their arm and pulling them away.

They made their way into their dormitory, which was otherwise empty. Al pulled off their robes and threw them on the foot of their bed. Their fifth of the dormitory was by far the most disorganized and cluttered, and they'd even left a note telling the house elves not to worry about it. But Scorpius had never seen Al scramble for a left sock or spend more than three seconds trying to locate a book or quill. Organized chaos, Al was.

Scorpius looked back to his bed. His sheets were sharply tucked under the mattress, a colour-coded schedule hanging above his headboard, pictures from home were tacked to the wall in a straight row…

"I'm sorry I yelled," Scorpius said.

"Me too," Al said. "We're pretty different people, I guess."

"Yeah," Scorpius said. "I… I hope that means we can still be friends."

"I think so," Al said.

They were both quiet for a second.

"You know, I was kind of excited about being the first Ravenclaw in the family," Al said, sitting on Scorpius' bed. "I thought it would be a fresh start."

"That's how I felt too," Scorpius said. He chewed his lip. "I hadn't… I hadn't thought you'd need one."

"I do," Al said. "Not for the same reasons as you, obviously. But I guess I was still holding on to a lot, which meant it didn't really what house I was in. Except it does, because I get to be here with you. And you're a good friend, I'm sorry I snapped."

Scorpius nodded. He looked up to his friend shyly.

"What's something you can owe, but never pay for?"

Al pondered this.

"An apology?" they ventured.

Scorpius nodded. Al grinned.


End file.
